Rehearsals for Extinct Anatomies
by Pterobat
Summary: What can drive you to love someone who may cause your death? For the shinigami Rem, it is the thing called "purpose".


**Rehearsals for Extinct Anatomies**

"Death's Heads! I win again!"

Then he was quiet, as if stopping to think on the change in his position. With a shriek, he swept out one long arm and knocked away the stacked skulls, sending teeth and bits of pate raining on the other players.

Letting out his wings, the winner flapped into the smoky sky, swearing loudly.

"D'you want to share his winnings?" one of the smaller ones asked me. I think it was out of fear instead of manners, for I was almost twice his size.

"No."

The othershinigami charged at the winnings, which were mostly broken scraps of things and withered food. There was enough room for me to bring out my own wings, and rise carefully above them.

Scavengers. Did they have nothing better do but complain? To let the boredom drive them crazy, so that they have stupid fits and look like complete idiots? Stupid.

I flew for a while, before noticing that I was coming over the lenses to the human world, scattered across the plain, and resembling like huge cracked globes that somebody had thrown out.

There was someone watching through one. I landed near him, and he did not notice me. He was quiet, simply staring into it. He was small, half-covered in rotting blue-green skin, the other parts of him yellowing bone, stitches everywhere, sitting on two short legs that didn't look like they could support his weight.

He didn't seem to care how close I had walked to him. "What are you doing?"

He tensed up. "I'm watching the human world," he said, carefully, like he was waiting for me to strike him.

I just put in my wings and squatted down. "What for?" Likely this was how he dealt with the boredom which so many seemed to treat like a curse.

Normally we'd only watch the human world when we were killing someone, but this one--Jealous, I finally remembered his name was--had his Death Note and its pen placed by his feet, forgotten.

Instead of answering, Jealous raised a rattling arm and pointed to the globe.

There was a human girl. I could pick out the specific type because I'd taken the lives of some, and because female humans sometimes resembled me a bit.

She was lying on her stomach on a bed, legs swinging crossed at the ankles. Her right fingers clacked across the keyboard of a small computer, while her left slid food on a stick in and out of her mouth. Her light hair was pulled into two short tails.

She didn't seem so special, just another one of many. I remarked on this to Jealous.

"Rem..." he said, not surprising me by knowing my name. "Look."

Jealous pointed again, his finger tracing an oval around the room, like it was giving me a tour, and I followed with my good eye.

There were dark scrolled hangings on her walls, and soft animal dolls with jagged black clothing and stitched-up mouths. A leather bag with batwings on the sides rested against her wall. The girl's own clothes matched the room.

"She is just like us," Jealous said after he thought I'd looked long enough. "A human female shinigami."

"She doesn't take lives." I said, feeling somehow insulted.

"Yes, she's different. But that's what makes her special, Rem. She can do whatever she wants, she has so much money and she's always going to exciting events. Not like us. We're stuck here.

"I love her, Rem. I wish that I could go to the human world and tell her that."

"So why don't you?"

"Because I'm too scared. And because I know that she wouldn't want me."

I looked at the room again. Those decorations of hers seemed somehow comical when they were trying to be sinister. I was not sure if I would have called them a mirror to the shinigami realm.

"Shinigami can't fall in love with each other," Jealous added, making me look at him. "Maybe that's why it's so hard to live here."

"Hmph." I tossed my head, flipping a few tentacles out of my good eye. "I can't think of anyone here that I'd _want_ to fall in love with. Listen, Jealous, it's fine that you've found something to occupy you, but don't think any more of it than it is. It's just like a human watching TV. They don't fall in love with people on the TV, do they?"

"Sometimes," he replied, and I wondered how long he'd been doing this. "A lot of people are in love with Misa-Misa--that girl. Misa Amane."

"Well, do what you want."

---------------------------------------------------------

But I kept coming back. Even when others noticed and walked by to laugh at Jealous, or throw chunks of rock and bone at him, I stayed. And sometimes I would let out my wings and use them to shield him. Even more rarely, Jealous would follow my example, putting out wings that looked like torn curtains, one blue-green and one yellow-white, both with stitches everywhere.

Usually Jealous didn't talk to me. When he did, they were the same words about this Misa and how poorly the nature of shinigami life compared with humans'.

One of the last things he said to me was, "She gives me a purpose, Rem. It's something that I never knew before, but it's great. Having something to work for."

"Uh-huh," was all I had said.

Next thing I knew, he was dead. A glittering pile of sand-and-rust, a Death Note and pen sticking out of it.

I had never seen a shinigami die before. I'd never even asked myself if that was a possible thing or not. Looking at the dusty pile made me feel strangely empty, and then like my mind was drifting away, and I was watching myself standing there.

I came back to reality, flexed my toes in the sand, and decided to look down to the pile, as if I could find out what made Jealous do something so stupid. Shinigami took lives, we didn't save them.

His remains were blowing away as I watched. Before they were completely gone, I raised my hand to my bad eye, lifting the band of skin covering it. I can't see it, but I can feel it, and have looked in cracked mirrors before to confirm that this happens: a long blue tongue sliding wetly from an empty, wrinkled socket.

I tasted the air with my second tongue, detecting things that I otherwise couldn't, but still didn't find anything to tell me why and I withdrew it, then pushed the skin back in place and lowered my hand.

I picked the Note up, the last of Jealous sliding easily off it.

I should have been finding something else to do, but for some reason I couldn't. The idea of just walking away felt unreal. I wanted to do something. I had to know what made Jealous kill himself. This "purpose". What was so important about it that it makes a shinigami do unnatural things? That it was worth dying for?

And that girl could have died at any moment; famous humans had a lot of..."stalkers", I think he was, or they died of drugs or car accidents. If she died, I could never know about "purpose", and that suddenly felt extremely important.

Looking from side to side, like I was hoping that no one would see me, I let my wings out and headed in the direction of an actual way to the human world, a twisting staircase leading down into darkness.

---------------------------------------------------------

I came out into their sky at sunset. The air felt different, warmer. The colours of the falling sun were stronger, brighter. There was more noise.

I tried to figure out the location from the pictures I watched with Jealous, matching up the sky and buildings. I made sure to fly high, even though no one could see me.

Eventually I put enough of the puzzle back together, and she was right there below me, hunching over to get into a long black vehicle. There was no chance of talking to her when those older humans were getting inside, too. I followed the vehicle from the air, hoping that she was headed off somewhere to be alone.

The vehicle stopped at a vast, tall building and she was led inside, surrounded by the older ones. She was talking to them, complaining about something.

After slipping through the wall, I hovered above the humans and followed them into the elevator, my body passing through all of them without feeling. I even turned and faced in the same direction they were, my arms hanging around Misa's guards. I retracted my wings, which were stretching through the elevator walls.

They followed the girl to her door and she shouted at them before slamming it hard. The humans looked at each other, one shrugged, and they all walked farther away down the hall. Not back into the elevator, though. Instead, they stayed standing in the hallway.

Not good. If she screamed at the sight of me, I'd have to cut that off quick so they wouldn't pick up on them. Like I'd been doing ever since I got there, I told myself again how stupid it was, but I went through Misa's door anyway.

She was lying on the bed facedown, arms and legs pointing in all directions. But she was just tired, not dead. Like she was trying to prove it to me, she pushed herself up with her elbows and rolled onto her back.

With a high, exaggerated sigh, she stretched, moaned, and relaxed her body. The room wasn't the same one that Jealous had watched her from, but the decorations were similar. But I was just letting myself get distracted. I knew that I couldn't change my mind now.

Drawing Jealous' Death Note from a compartment in my back, I tossed it to the end of her bed. It landed between her ankles, and she went up with a squeak.

I walked closer to the bed as she changed position and crawled on her hands and knees towards the Note.

As her fingers touched it, I leaned forward and wrapped my hand around her nose and mouth. Her eyes, already big, got even bigger as she felt my hand, which would have had no human warmth. A muffled whine was all she could get out.

Keeping a grip on her head, I turned my body around so I was facing her. Putting my free claw to my face, I touched a finger to my lips. Out loud I added, "I'm not going to hurt you. When I let you go, talk quietly, because what I'm going to tell you can't be heard by your guards."

Gently I drew my hand away, and she sucked in her breath to cry, "Mon--!"

My hand went over her mouth again. "Are you going to be quiet or not? Please, I just..." What did I want, anyway? To find out the meaning of "purpose". "No one can see or hear me but you. I want to give you something, Misa Amane."

Hearing her name seemed to calm her down, but I didn't take my hand away then. I told her, "What you're holding there is called a 'Death Note'. If you write the real name of someone in it, in forty seconds they will die of a heart attack. You can also specify the cause of death and the timeframe, though there are limits.

"Now I don't want to stand here with my hand over your mouth and explain else everything to you. Are you going to scream this time?"

She shook her head, a noise coming out from behind my hand. I took it away but otherwise didn't move.

"Why did you give me this?" She held up the Death Note in both hands and thrust it at me, as if to remind me what she's talking about.

"I gave it to you so that you could use it to protect yourself."

She cocked her head to one side. "Why?"

"I...don't want to tell you. At least, not yet."

"Okay!" she chirped.

Well, that was easier than I'd thought.

"Thank you, Monster!"

"I'm a shinigami, actually."

Her eyes widened. More quietly she said, "Oh. Did you say that you needed a _real_ name to kill someone?"

"Uh, yes." She was taking to this a lot faster than I'd thought. "Why?"

"Because..." Her face turned red. "I want to use this to help Kira bring justice to the world."

"Will you slow down? Who is this 'Kira'?"

"That's not his real name; it just comes from how you say the English word 'killer' in Japanese, but it's also a person's name." She tapped her chin. "He's a force of justice, killing criminals without being near them. He's killed criminals in their cells. He killed the man who murdered my parents. For that...Misa-Misa will always follow him." She clutched the Death Note to her chest, hands paling as she gripped it.

"He has to have a shinigami," I said.

"Huh?"

"The only way a human could do that is with a Death Note." Probably Ryuk, I thought. I didn't know him well, but I could picture him doing something stupid like that.

"Then _I_ can be the second Kira."

"What? No, no, no, I gave that to you to protect yourself." I put a hand to my head. "It's more dangerous if you try to do that."

"But this is what I want to do. I _have_ to do it."

I paused, running my claws over my head-tentacles before dropping my arm. "And you think that is your purpose?"

"I..._Yes_! All I want to do is to help Kira. He is a saviour."

This girl--I should start calling her by her name--wasn't afraid of me at all. Misa was staring right at me, like she was daring me to tell her what not to do with the Death Note.

"You do need the real name," I added after a few seconds. "And there's a quick way to get that."

"How?"

"I can give you Shinigami Eyes. You have to trade half your lifespan to get them, but once you do, you can see the real name and date of death of any person you're looking at, even a projected image of them."

"Then give Misa-Misa the Eyes."

Didn't she want to think about it, first? But then again, maybe I'd lived my life so slow, that it was hard for me to think of quick action. No need to act in a world with nothing in it.

I put my hand towards her, and for an instant her eyes flashed red before returning to normal.

"Thank you! Now I just need a way to communicate with Kira."

---------------------------------------------------------

I was quiet through all her planning, and it was only after Misa had made her first move that I tried to tell her again that I'd given the Death Note only to her, but she still didn't listen to me. And I felt that getting angry at her wouldn't do anything.

But the other reason I chose to be mostly quiet was that I wanted to see this pure human drive in action, to watch the effort she put into it. Misa was so happy at the idea of contacting Kira that she worked when she was supposed to be sleeping, and told me that she thought of it every second, even when working, though apparently she kept attached enough to the world to obey the commands of her handlers.

It's that "purpose". What shinigami don't have. Something to try so hard for, something chosen by your own soul, unlike having to write a few names in your Death Note now and then, a feeling stronger maybe than anything I could ever feel.

Misa is motivated; that's what gives her life, and I now want so badly to share that. I'm not human, though. I can't find something to work for alone. The only thing for me is to help Misa Amane achieve her dreams.

I can't go back to the Shinigami Realm and live my life as before. I would be just like the others now: angry and empty. I have finally understood why they felt that way, and maybe it would be worse for me, because I would have tasted something better.

Things could get bad for me. It's obvious that Misa would quickly sacrifice me if it would get her closer to Kira, and even then I can't be sure that I won't be forced to take actions that will result in my death. I want to be back scoffing at those who scream and curse about their boring lives while I go on being calm.

Do I care for Misa-Misa the same way Jealous did? Only not...because I don't think humans of the same gender fall in love. I've never seen that happen through the windows, anyway.

I followed Misa when she left the hotel, flying above her handlers, to the new place where she was staying. Whenever she tapped the code on her widow, I flew eagerly down to her, no mistaking that emotion. The look on her face behind the glass was sometimes impatient, but I saw it also as focused.

To protect Misa. Even at the cost of my life, for there isn't any real life without "purpose", and Misa's purpose is the only life I can see.

Misa.


End file.
